The Downside to Boob Armor

Fantasy armor and femininity. Fun topic, huh?

College Humor's recent short on the subject makes for a good laugh. It got me thinking on the subject though, in relation to my endless search for attractive armor.

 

I tend to struggle with armor in games, because I will always play as a woman if I am given the option. I simply prefer to play as a female. (Even when I was a little girl, I'd be wondering why there were only two female Power Rangers, or why there was only one woman I could kick ass with in the original Mortal Kombat, until the second one, where three more were introduced. I didn't want or expect an all woman roster in the shows and games I was into. It just bugged me that they were always outnumbered. Just had to get that out there. Back to the topic at hand.)

Pictured: the Topic

When it comes to female armor, I am almost always at a loss. Games with female armor are usually in one of two camps: the "realistic" or the ridiculous. The 'realistic' essentially believes that women would just put on armor designed for men. After all, even though this is a world in which women fight, why would they want or need anything different than the menfolk? The ridiculous plays right into the hands of the concept of the male gaze. Women are dressed for the benefit of their male companions - most importantly, the player who is assumed to be male. They are there to look sexy to the observer, having armor that is essentially useless when put into a battle scenario.

Don't believe me? Rooster Teeth tested it out with Ivy and Sophitia from Soul Calibur.

 Many of the games I play will give you lots of options in bulky plate armor, but they look huge and awkward on their female bodies. I tend to play as rouges rather than tanks, so I want to maintain the illusion that my character can move around swiftly without sounding like an Everything Must Go sale in the kitchen section of a Bed Bath and Beyond. I want something that is attractive, but obviously functional as armor.

Functional - definition: not this.

Outside of what gender I play, I like having attractive and custom armor. I like mods that let me pick and choose the aesthetics of the game I am playing. Custom eye colors, hair styles, and of course custom clothing and armor. If I'm going to be staring at the outfit for hours on end, I'd like it to be something that appeals to me.

 

Thus, my dilema. See, many (if not most, depending on the game) mods will give you the ability to role play that Battle Stripper you've always been dreaming about, but not much else. I gave up on looking for mods in Oblivion for females, as most of what I found were focused on giving them breasts that are individually larger than their head and next-to-nothing to wear to cover them up. 

Oh, and the argument that it's to maintain their agility is BS. You can maintain your agility while still covering your vital organs and wearing something that won't cause your ta-tas to fall out. Boob flashing is most likely not going to be a very effective form of self defense if the person you're fighting really does intend to kill you. 

Now, I'm not going to say that super "sexy" female armor shouldn't be available - far from it. What right would I have to demand that sexy armor mods not exist simply because they don't fulfill the needs I'm looking for? Hell, I've even contributed to the sexification of female armor in art, albeit my motivations were more out of humor rather than fappery. 

My take on the "mage's robes" from Dragon Age.

I just wish there was more variety. I wish there was something in between the very masculine and the grotesquely masturbatory "feminine". Those designs to exist.  

These armors: Protection + being hotter than you ever will be.

So there. Rant over, I suppose. I guess I just need to take some time to learn to make my own armor mods, so I can kick ass as a woman who doesn't look like she's just there to encourage splooge production.

Green Lantern's Not Shining Bright, but Not Completely Dim

My fiance is a huge Green Lantern fan. Huge. Outside of just reading comics, he owns two Green Lantern hats, one Green Lantern shirt, and a denim jacket that I stitched the Lantern logo onto the back of. He and I have watched each of the animated Green Lantern stories. He would have a Green Lantern ring of his own if he didn't have a chronic case anti-jewelry-itis.

Part of a comic I drew for him for Christmas. Seriously. He's that into it.

So when he and I heard they were making a Green Lantern movie, we were understandably excited. Seeing a fan trailer for it starring one of our favorite actors didn't hurt, either:

Alas, it was not to be. We knew it wasn't a real trailer, but it got us both jazzed about the possibility of an awesome film. Unlike many other superhero stories, Green Lantern really dances along the line between traditional superhero and traditional science fiction. Hollywood can make awesome science fiction movies, so why not an awesome sci-fi superhero flick?

Then Ryan Reynolds was cast. Not a terrible choice, but we weren't expecting a great performance out of him. Then pictures of the goofy-ass costume came out. Then the first trailer hit. Oh boy. With questionable CGI and costumes that looked bizarrely painted-on, I was worried.

It's like Zorro decided to start LARP'ing as a wood elf.

We saw the film together, decked out in Green Lantern gear, and I was half-expecting to duck out of there at the end of the film, hiding behind the brim of my hat, ashamed to be seen in a fandom associated with that crappy film (If Avatar: The Last Airbender's movie could do that to me, Green Lantern certainly could. Thank goodness I didn't buy any merch for that movie before it came out. Yeesh.)

And then it happened. The movie didn't suck.

It wasn't a miraculous piece of film making, but it wasn't terrible. The story was easy to follow and they covered most of the basics. There were definite weaknesses, but it wasn't a travesty. Reynolds didn't play the smarmy jack ass I expected out of him, but he didn't turn Hal into a cardboard cut out with no personality.

If anything, I think the movie had some serious editing issues. The decision to use Parallax created a lead into making the Yellow ring for the next film. The changes they made to Hammond created an interesting parallel to Hal (both given powers by their contact with alien life, one for good and one for evil), though they did little with this parallel to make the characters foils of one another. They gave us a decent look at Oa and some of the other Lanterns who often play crucial roles in Hal's interactions with the Corps. But spending so much time on his friends and family, his love interest, his job situation, etc. made the film really bloated and made me wish I could have seen more of what makes Hal's story stand out from the others. Nearly every superhero movie focuses, at least in part, on the hero's love interest. They just didn't need that in this movie. There was so much interesting material to work with in the Corps - the politics of the Guardians, the mentor/antagonistic relationship between Hal and Sinestro, etc.

Over at pajiba, they make an interesting point about the editing of this film:

One thing I feel needs mentioning: this is not Martin Campbell’s cut of the film, but the studio’s. I live in New Orleans where it was shot, I read the shooting script, all of which was painstakingly filmed with intense research, and all of that was left on the cutting room floor — a sort of combination of what happened to Daredevil and Watchmen, respectively — character development sacrificed for CG, scenes made irrelevant by removing their setup. The movie in the theater starts with an explanation of mythos that is made redundant by the more natural, scripted questions from Hal when he gets the ring. Ten minutes of childhood Hal, Carol, and Hector that sets up Hal’s first ring construct is reduced to an awkwardly placed flashback in the middle of another scene. The training with the ring is almost completely excised except for one minor scene. Most appallingly, the ending completely deletes the fact that Kilowog, Sinestro, and Toma-Re arrive at the end and help Hal defeat Parallax. Not to mention Parallax was supposed to be a 3rd act reveal after we spend the film worried about Hammond going evil, not the main villain for the entire film. I sincerely hope we get a director’s cut or at least all the deleted scenes on the video release.

So, maybe a director's cut is in order. Would it be any better? It depends. If they leave in all of the content that it has in the final release but inject a ton of extra scenes, I think it may still feel bloated and out of place. The sequences with Parallax seemed very tacked on and disconnected from the rest of the film. Not only that, but the threat that Parallax poses against the galaxy seemed played down once they finally got to the big show-down. Placing in exclusively in the third act would increase the sense of danger he poses, rather than having him float around the galaxy while the Lanterns talk up how destructive he can be.

I would definitely be interested in what they cut from Killawog, Toma-Re and Sinestro. Some people think that there was too much Sinestro in this film, but I think there wasn't really enough. They hinted at it, but I feel like his relationship to Hal as a comerade is much more important in setting him up as a [SPOILERS] villain [/SPOILERS] than giving face time to his girl-back-home. I don't think that he needed much more screen time if they had used what time he was given more effectively. He's not all buddy-buddy with Hal, but if they're going off of Secret Origin (the comic that I believe they cited as inspiration) then Sinestro should be a bit more of a mentor, like the sensei who doesn't particularly like his pupil, but still aims to push him to be better.

This movie wasn't terrible and it definitely deserves a sequel rather than having to scrap it and start over.

If you want a better way to be introduced to the series, check out the animated Green Lantern: First Flight.

I finally got my Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan in the follow up animated piece Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. It's also pretty awesome and will give you a lot of the history of the Corps without being a total exposition dump. I highly recommend it. Still, it's not a piece that focuses heavily on Hal specifically, so it doesn't really fulfill the desire to see Nathan take on the role.

One day, Fillion. One day.

Agree? Disagree? Then let me know. Leave a comment below. I don't claim my word as law. Keep it civil and I'm all up for discussion and debate.

She's Crafty - 8-Bit Hoodie

I have a hidden passion: I love DIY projects.

I collect tutorials in my bookmarks and regularly watch interior decorating shows - not so I can oogle at things I can't afford, but so I can figure out ways to achieve the same effect on my own.

It's not really all that apparent, since I don't have my own sewing machine, nor do I have space to stretch out and work on a big project. Hell, right now I don't even have my own space that I can really decorate outside of hanging up a few of my paintings. I have always loved the idea of customization, whether it be in clothes or decor or what-not. It saves money, it's generally good for the environment, and leaves me with something completely unique. When I get time to charge up my camera, I'll probably take a few snaps of things I've made. But that's for another day...

Here we've got a tutorial that combines two of my loves: DIY and Geekery. Check out a super-simple tutorial on making a Space Invader's inspired hoodie:

Keep in mind that this process can be used on anything from a shirt to a jacket... hell, even a pair of jeans, if you're creative enough and use sturdy enough fabric. I'd start out with a simple design, like the Space Invader if you're doing this for the first time.

This video comes from the awesome Corrine Leigh (formerly from Threadbangers). She's started a new show on Youtube called Craftovision. Anyone into DIY tutorials specifically focusing on clothing should check her out.

So, yeah. Taking a cheap hoodie and making it something geektastic is WAY cooler than buying it's equivalent at Hot Topic.

Australia Censors the Internet

Oh boy. Here we go.

So news just recently came out that Australia is planning on implementing their internet censoring strategy in July. Immediate reaction? Boo! Hiss! Evil censorship. Then you find out that their primary aim is to block child porn sites. Sounds reasonable, right?

Except they're going about it the wrong way. First of all, there is no appeals process in place for websites that get placed on the blacklist - and Wikileaks has already revealed that sites that are unrelated to illegal activities have made the cut (unless Australia has suddenly outlawed dentists in Queensland).

Donna Ashelford of the System Administrators Guild of Australia pointed out that this plan probably won't have an effect on the distribution of child porn anyway. "Child abuse material is more likely to be exchanged on peer-to-peer networks and private networks anyway and is a matter for law enforcement." Keep in mind now, these blockages are being enforced by the internet providers, not the government. So law enforcement is not the one enforcing the restriction to these materials - it's all private sector. (Enforcement, that is. The creation of the list is coming from the Australian Communications and Media Authority, as well as unnamed sources.) The  Electronic Frontier Foundation claims that there is no transparency or accountability in the process of deciding who gets blacklisted, greatly increasing the chances of sites being wrongfully blocked.

Also, these sites are blocked by their URL, meaning that they can continue to be in operation if they simply change their address by only one character. Effective, no?

As with all censorship, its boundaries are almost never as solid and stable as we would like to think. The positive goal, restricting access to child pornography, could (and is likely to) restrict the rights of individuals who are not engaging in illegal activities who just happen to find themselves on the wrong list. Without a way to appeal and defend themselves, this system is setting itself up for this inevitability. It's effectiveness is rightfully questioned, making us wonder if it is worth it to unintentionally restrict the innocent if the greater good isn't even being achieved. And, as always, when you begin to censor things in a free society, you set a presedent for expanding the boundaries of what is and isn't appropriate for people to see.

Source: news.com.au

Casual vs. Hardcore: What Makes a Gamer?

I've heard a lot of discussion about casual gaming - what defines it and whether or not it poses a "threat" to hardcore gamers.

Why would anybody care about the intricacies of gamer labeling? Many times, these arguments are made with the aim of placing one group against the other: the casual gamers aren't "real" gamers and are "posers" for trying to move into a subculture that has been established for years, while the hardcore gamers are people (mostly male) who live in their parents' basement and have no social lives due to their obsessive attachment to racking up the most headshots. Both views are based solely on stereotype and these arguments, in many instances, are aimed at dividing the gaming culture: the true gamers from those who simply play games. 

Let's try to break down this monstrosity. I have heard a number of ways of defining a casual gamer vs. a hardcore gamer. However, most arguments come down to three main factors:

1) number of hours playing

2) type of game being played

3) the difficulty at which the gamer chooses to play

Right away, I see some problems with this.

Let's take this hypothetical woman as an example: She plays Bejeweled with a seriousness and dedication that many would put toward training for a chess tournament. Hour after hour she sits, racking up points. She is always near the top of the leaderboard, meaning she out-performs the average skill level of the average player.

Breaking it down by the numbers:
1) she plays a lot of hours of Bejeweled and is on par with a hardcore gamer who spends the same amount of time questing in World of Warcraft. Does this make her a hardcore gamer?

2)But wait, the game she is playing is Bejeweled, one of the games that almost defines the casual gaming genre with how often it is used as an example by people having this debate. If Bejeweled is the quintessential casual game, then you must be a casual gamer if you play it, correct?

3) Difficulty is subjective. On the surface, Bejeweled is a very simple game. It only has a few criteria that one must keep in mind in order to play it. In that sense, it is an incredibly simple game. It does not require you make a difficult series of jumps and navigate a physical puzzle like many platformers, nor do you have to manage your health bar and eliminate threats while proceeding to your objective. You can lose the game and start over, but you don't necessarily have to approach your whole strategy differently as you would if, say, playing Mass Effect and realizing that the route you were trying to take through the enemy base was not allowing you enough cover and that if you run past the giant hangar and into a smaller corridor, you can funnel your enemies into a much more manageable shoot-out.

I find these discussions problematic because they start to meander into blurring the very lines their argument has tried to create. Does that really help us better understand whether or not we can call this Bejeweled Master a casual gamer? That's not even touching on the subject of the variety of games she plays. If she plays Bejeweled and only Bejeweled, does that make her a casual gamer? What about XXRageKillAholicXX on Xbox who plays hours of Halo? Would he be a casual gamer because he's not playing a wide variety of games, even though he is playing a game that is more "hardcore" than Bejeweled? (Apologies, XXRageKillAholicXX if you do indeed exist. If so, kudos on an interesting choice of gamertag.)

Somehow, I imagine this is what you'd look like.

And this isn't even touching on the subject of gendering the casual vs. the hardcore gamers. I guess I should save that can of worms for another day. Long and short of it: there are women who have long term relationships with their consoles of choice, just as there are men who want to play the occasional game of Tetris on their phone and be done with it.

The "Threat" of Casual Gaming?

Some of you may be wondering what the "threat" is that hardcore gamers are so worried about? In part, with the sudden rise of casual gaming, there is a fear that developers will stop funding projects that are aimed at the hardcore gaming group. After all, if a casual game can be played by both the hardcore and the casual gamers, then wouldn't it financially make more sense to fund the latest iteration of Angry Birds rather than put time, money and a lot of technological investment into making LA Noire, which doesn't tie in nicely to an established, successful game genre and pushes the boundaries of animated character's emotive abilities? Both Angry Birds and LA Noire are great games, but the latter implies more financial risk. There is more time and money invested in the development with a potentially smaller number of gamers who are willing to risk putting down $50+ on a game they may not enjoy.

I fully understand and sympathize with the concerns that casual gaming may bump out games that are more challenging. After all, I'm some where in between the casual and the hardcore gamer, and I regularly struggle with not finding enough games that strike my fancy. I think it would be a serious mistake for the market to focus on one niche at the exclusion of all others. Economically speaking, that would simply flood the market with multiple versions of very similar games, creating too much competition. If gaming companies provide a variety of types of games, then they have a better chance of seeing success.

The one thing I don't sympathize as much with is the snobbery of difficulty levels. It's great that you can beat Dragon Age in Nightmare mode in your sleep. Why, though, were forums lit up with complaints about the developers of Dragon Age II expressing concern that the difficulty was too hard for certain gamers and so they would make sure that the Easy mode they provided before did not set the difficulty so high that it frustrated players who found themselves overwhelmed in the first game? Even after repeated assurances that the game would still have multiple levels of difficulty and that Nightmare mode would still exist, people were bitching and moaning about people having to have a "dumbed down" version of the game.

Now, there are legitimate complaints about the difficulties being unbalanced in Dragon Age II - but that's not the issue at hand. The primary complaint, before the game came out, came across more like "I'm such a bad ass, all you whimps can suck it" as opposed to a legitimate concern for their gameplay experience being compromised.

There seems to be a general disdain for casual and easy modes. I simply cannot understand it. If you don't want to play a game on Easy or Casual, then don't. Most of the games that provide a number of difficulty levels will provide you with at least two, if not more, difficulties above Easy. So what if a game developer wants to make the game accessible to a wider variety of gamers with different skill sets? It means they're more likely to sell more copies of the game, thus making more money and being able to fund future projects. I'm legitimately curious about this - does it all boil down to a dick-measuring contest about what a skilled player you are, or are there real reasons that effect your gaming experience if a game provides a difficulty level below what you play in?

So, what's the point?

Gamers are gamers. If you play games, you are a gamer. The more we try to create these mostly-arbitrary labels for each group, the more we're going to convince the men and women with the big bucks funding game developers that there are only two types of players they need to market to. The more limited we become in who is and isn't a purveyor of fine gaming entertainment, the more limited our selection of games for sale could potentially be.

The gaming world is expanding and changing. It has always been constantly evolving. So, there should be just as much room at the table for the social gamers, the casual gamers, the hardcore gamers, and the rest of us who aren't scared to pick up a controller and kick some digital ass.

I don't pretend to be an expert. Disagree with me? Feel free to let me know in the comments. As long as you keep things civil, I'm all for debate.

X-Men: First Class Review (w/ some spoilers)

I posted this video on Youtube after the film came out - but considering the subject, I figure it makes sense to share it here:

Some light film analysis. More serious content to follow.

Curvy Geek - def. Uncertain

I will thoroughly admit this now - I am not certain what I want this blog to become. I feel the stirrings of change and feel the need to document it, which is not surprising considering that I am

1) in my early twenties, struggling between doing what I love and doing what is necessary to pay the bills

-and-

2) desperately missing the thrill I used to feel when putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as I suppose is most appropriate here.)

I expect that this blog will be filled with a sprinkling of reviews, a dash of things-that-inspire-me, a sprig of health and fitness, a pinch of journaling and a whole heaping dose of personal musings. This blog is a lot like myself - full of lots of concepts and ideas, but not really able to put a definite finger on any simple categorical definition.

Unless that definition is simply "Odd"

That being said, a little bit about myself:
As of this posting, I am just barely 24 years old. I have a part time job as a Standardized Test Evaluator (and great googly moogly I wish I could post about some of the wacky shit these kids come up with... darn confidentiality) and am trying to make a livable wage off of freelance graphic design and illustration. I'm a fairly healthy adult, but not slim enough to keep the occasional jerk from feeling free to shout insults about my weight at me (yay, maturity!).

I used to do a lot of creative writing when I was younger - had a whole series of books going with a list of people at school who'd line up to read them. Then, one day, I simply couldn't continue. I told myself at the time that it was stress mixed in with a healthy dose of teenage depression that squashed my creativity like a blind worm trying to cross a highway, but in retrospect have come to realize that I was also running out of ideas. While the books were a great achievement for my age, they weren't the most inspiring pieces of literature and there's only so far that I could stretch the concepts I was working with before I began to feel dissatisfied with the quality of my work.

Not that completely halting my writing for the better part of 5 years was satisfying either. Guess my subconscious didn't really think ahead in that respect.

I recently graduated college with a BA in Psychology. It's a field that fascinates me, but I keep wavering about whether or not it was a good choice. On the one hand, it's a good general degree that I can apply to a number of fields as far as careers go. On the other hand, it's a field that I can't really get work in unless I go to grad school. Not only am I not in the right financial place in my life to afford grad school without loans that I can't afford or asking more from my parents than I am comfortable with, but frankly I got very burned out in college. The last few months of my senior year were a mess - my grades were good, but I had a horrible time trying to balance the stress of paying bills, going to work, going to class, going through an emergency surgery, struggling with my landlords, and supporting my fiance as he desperately searched for work in this terrible economy. Once I graduated, I was done with school for a while.

The funny thing is, while I don't want to go back to school at this point in my life, I do miss the structure that it gave me. I was always a high achiever in school - academics came easily to me (ignoring the higher-level math courses) and I think a good amount of my self esteem depended upon school as the ruler to judge my value against. Without that... it's gotten a little harder to feel like a good productive person. Looking for work at a time when jobs are hard to come by has made it harder to feel positive about the things I am doing with my life.

But rather than wander down the road of existential crisis, let's end this post here. I hope I can post things that are useful, entertaining and possibly inspirational. Assuming I do so, then maybe even one day I can get an actual audience to speak to. It's an odd feeling to speak to everyone and no one at the same time as I post this, knowing that the chances of anyone reading it may be slim.

Be good, be happy, and try not to freak out all the time.

Jez